Are You Normal?

Is it normal to be scared of space

Space scares me. I usually can’t finish watching a video about space/other planets because it’s too much for me. The sun scares me. I have paranoid thoughts that they are lying about the sun and that it’s actually going to expand and engulf the earth and kill us all sooner than they say. I’m paranoid about asteroids hitting the earth and them not being able to stop it in time. I actually have nightmares of seeing the sun expand and also of planets and asteroids hitting the earth. I believe that we live in a time where we know too much about things and some people, like me, can’t handle the knowledge.

I suppose it's not an irrational fear. I mean we really could get nailed by an asteroid at any time. But honestly, why worry about it? If it happens, it happens. Spending your time worrying about something no one could prevent seems pointless. Try to enjoy yourself while you're on this rock hurdling through space😊

No oxygen? Gamma rays and other forms of harmful radiation? Temperature extremes? Gravity extremes (black holes)? Huge, huge unfathomably large expanses of, well, space? Asteroids, comets, meteors and other flying rocks? Stars that are billions of times larger and brighter than our own sun? Dark matter and dark energy (which baffles astronomers as to what it even is)? Supernovas? Quasars? Maybe perhaps even other forms of life (whose nature upon meeting us would be very hostile)? There are plenty of things in space to be scared of out there!

Asteroids: the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter (many believe it used to be a planet that was smashed by other meteors) is composed of between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids larger than 1 km (0.6 mi) in diameter, and millions of smaller ones. That's up to two million planet killing asteroids. These are the ones we need to really worry about because they are already past Jupiter which is our first line of defense from meteors. On top of that there's the Kuiper belt which is twenty to two hundred times the mass of the asteroid belt with up to one hundred thousand asteroids 100 km (62 mi) in size. And there is another one the Oort cloud.

Comets: we really shouldn't worry about asteroids. What we need to worry about are comets. These are large collections of rock and gas formed in the Kuiper belt an are pulled out by gravity, toward the sun. We could easily get in the way of one of these. Of the comets that do pass through our system astronomers only expect 253 comets to ever return.

Rogue Planets: Some planets do not orbit stars. instead they wander through our universe. Some times into other solar systems like our own. Some predict Mercury may do this in the future.

Stars: Then we have to worry about other stars. The universe is in motion and so are the stars they are not fixed in space. Like Gliese 710 which will enter the Oort cloud 1.35 million years from now. This will cause untold destruction. Then there are Magnatars, Black Holes, Neutron Stars (a starquake within ten lightyears would destroy all life on earth), Quasars (black hole like objects that spit out intense energy), Super Novas (1k Pegusi will go in 40 million years), and Gamma ray bursts, Cosmic dust storms, Galactic colisions (Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide in about five billion years). Oh, I could go on but this song might cheer you up.

space is amazing and beautiful, but like all other beautiful things, you should have a certain respect for it. I love space, and I cant stop watching about it and learning more. some things (like astroids) are just out of our feeble human control, and unless we learn more about it, it will stay that way until one actually does hit (not that I think humans will be around long enough for that; we will kill ourselves off before that most likely with our wars and greed), and we wont know how or be able to stop it.

I'm hard to scare but the thought of the sun expanding and engulfing Earth and killing us frightens me too. I'm also afraid of giant solar flares hitting Earth and burning everything up like in the Nicolas Cage movie Knowing.